


That Tethered Mind

by arisaema



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Meowrails, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Sadstuck, Suicidal Thoughts, robot fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2017-12-08 19:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arisaema/pseuds/arisaema
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Equius broke his horn, and how he found Nepeta</p><p>A series of 4 moments in Equius's life, looking at why he makes the decisions he does, before and after meeting Nepeta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So far it is just me getting all up in Equius's mind (am I the only one who is into that?), but it'll become Equius/Nepeta palemance, I promise.

Equius Zahhak doesn’t often dwell on the memory of the day his horn broke. Blood and teeth and the taste of metal are what he remembers most, when he thinks about it, which isn’t often. This is not because it was too painful to want to remember. Although it’s not pleasant-the sound of his horn snapping and the crunch and gush of his teeth falling out of his mouth, dripping down his chin in the trickle of the blue blood that weaved its way through the new spaces in his bite- the pain itself doesn’t bother him much. Pain never has.

He doesn’t think about it because he has the memory locked behind some of the barriers he sets for his own mind. No one else follows the rules, any rules, and setting new ones for himself always makes him feel better about it. Navigating his mind requires a satisfying amount of cerebral sidestepping, some thoughts deferring to others in a labyrinthian loop that makes a perverse amount of sense to him. He never quite gets why no one else bothers with this compulsive thinking strategy. It keeps things in a logical order: each thought is right where he left it, not one synapse out of line. That’s what he likes to think, at least. The potential notion that This Is Stupid is conveniently buried pretty far back, and would never dream of presenting itself.

The memory which he does not often access doesn’t start off as anything special. It was certainly not the first time he set one of his robots to Kill Mode-he’d battled his first crudely constructed foe when he was 3 sweeps, and now he was almost 5. It was, however, the first time he thought about letting one win. It wasn’t for long that he thought it, but a moment is all it takes for that sort of thing, really. And if he had been anyone other than himself, it would have worked.

He was just so angry, and so _tired_ of being angry. It was a constant, encompassing sort of fury that he got so used to that it began to feel like the only weight he could never lift. He knew the anger befitted a troll of his caste, but the pride he knew he was supposed to feel in that fact slid uncomfortably against the idea that he didn’t particularly _like_ feeling angry. But like it or not, the feeling was there, burning white hot in his throat. It made him want to break everything, to make everything else look the way he felt.

He knew what he was capable of, and he was terrified of the day when demolishing robots wouldn’t be enough to sate that urge. When the time came, he wondered, which would be worse: to act on it, or to be stuck with the horrible feeling of wanting to? It would be so simple, he thought, to rip the rage out out of himself by ripping apart everyone else. But the idea of funneling his ire into hurting anyone other than himself made him nervous, which, in turn, made him ashamed.

He never talked to the two people he might have considered friends about this. One just above him on the hemospectrum, the other just below; they never bothered with the rules, and he didn’t know how to explain his feelings without endangering the fragile reality he knew was the right thing to build for himself. There was no one else to talk to and he wasn’t sure if there would ever be. Even with the social order allowing for just about every kind of fucked up in the book, he still never felt normal. If only, he thought, his brain and his body could be wired like one of his machines.

It should have been simple enough, but it wasn't. In lieu of wires, he forged his own synapses. He felt like his blood status should require more out of him, but as it was, at his age, there just wasn't that much for a tightly wound blueblood to do to prove himself. He was haughtily possessive of the home and lusus he had not been sure he'd ever have, just in case someone might realize his abnormality was grounds for culling, and take it, and Aurthour, away from him. He kept his mind busy in preparation for if the time came to show he was capable.

When he was younger he'd sit, barely taking up a corner of the high backed chair in the library, a too-short leg lazily swinging over the gilded seat edge, too lost in the pages to remember to look dignified. He spent sweeps reading books about mechanics because his brain could never get enough of the logical beauty of it, books on Alternian history because he thought he should, and Musclebeast Monthly because, of all the things he questioned about himself, that was never one. He read until the corners of the turns in his mind were sharp steel. He built robots because there was nothing else for his mind to do, nowhere else for it all to go, and he destroyed them because he was bored and lonely and most of all angry that this was all that was left for him.

D-->

And so, on the day it happened, he fought one. His knuckles split where they met metal but he did not stop. They had healed before and they would heal again. They tumbled over each other, him and the robot, Equius’s rage building with each punch. Once, he could have ended it at the point he usually did, but he held back. It hadn’t hurt enough yet. He needed to tear the skin, draw the blood-if he saw his seams undo, maybe he'd understand what they were there for. He steadied himself, and as a metal elbow headed toward his mouth, he thrust himself forward to meet it. The floor was slick with sweat and blood and he did not stop, even as he stepped on what he knew was probably one of his teeth. The robot had one hand around each of his horns. Equius saw his next move- with both arms busy, the robot wouldn’t be able to block a punch. This was about as far as his technique went, anyway. There really wasn’t much need for form when a few STRONG enough kicks could end it.

It was then that it happened. His perfect thought system faltered-a glitch in the wire-and the ghost of an idea slipped through a barrier and emblazoned itself across his brain: he could stop fighting back. He could be done. He tried to block it, trap it in the void behind a sharp corner in his mind. But this time it did not work fast enough. In the moment it took for him to wonder what it would be like to die, to wrap himself in the quiet rest of never feeling angry, or feeling anything, ever again, the robot had him pinned, supine, to the ground, one metal knee in his gut, one metal hand around his neck. Before he knew it, the robot’s other hand, which was still wrapped around his right horn, lifted his head and slammed it into the floor. His remaining teeth shook as his head hit the floor again and again, and bright spots bloomed in his eyes with each reverberation. He tried not to relish it. The grip on his throat felt almost friendly as it beckoned him to sleep. Was this an invitation to rest or a challenge to fight? A feeling rose in his gut as a soft cerulean tint darkened the edges of his vision and he realized it was panic.

The moment was over and his answer surged through him, flashing angry blue through his eyes. Equius fought back. He strained against the force of the metal on his windpipe and on his horn, as though he could break _through_ the robot’s grip instead of _out_ of it. He swung himself upward against the mounting pressure, ignoring the robot’s entire weight backing a locked-elbow anchor grip on his right horn.

It all happened at once. His body continued its upward trajectory, fueled by rage and pain and a furious need for air. He heard the crack of a rib that had been pinned under the robot’s knee. Its arm stayed locked in place, stiff fingers grinding against the roughness of his horn. The arc of Equius’s head continued, unfettered in its motion, as the top half of his right horn came away in the robot’s hand.

He did not stop moving until his head had connected with the robot’s, knocking it off its hinges. Not until he had ripped its arms from their sparking sockets. When he did, the tangled sound that fought its way out of his finally free throat was more than a scream. It was that and a battle cry and a sob all being torn out of him at once. And after, at last, a breath.

Pain exploded from the newly exposed nerve endings in his horn and shot down his his spine. The last thing he remembers is reaching his swollen, broken fingers up to test the fresh, jagged edge. And then he collapsed.

Across the room, the sundered arms lay innocently in a pile of other robot parts, silver fingers hardly distinguishable from the others in the heap as the ones which almost won.

D-->

It was Aurthour who found him like that, of course. Who else could it have been? He trotted into the room, ready with towel and fresh glass of milk in hand, and saw him, his chosen charge, his Equius, lying on his back in a slowly burgeoning puddle of blood. His plain round face contorted with terror and his whole body trembled, down to the tips of his mustache. He stood uselessly for a moment, the disbelieving shake of his head barely perceptible. He paid no attention to the sharp sound of glass breaking as he ran to Equius. The thick milk swirled as it mixed with the blood on the floor.

Aurthour’s tentative hand on Equius’s chest found a flutter of heartbeat, a swell of breath. He set to action. Aurthour was strong, but Equius was heavy. His hands, usually so capable, slipped on sweat and blood as they tried to lift him. He grew more frantic with each attempt, choking on tears as he lost his hold, dropping Equius back to the ground. In the end he had to drag him, inch by inch, over to his recuperacoon, using his last reserves of strength to roll him into it.

Equius’s body slid into the sopor slime, his hair fanning out in tendrils in the viscous fluid tucked under his chin. It was then that he came-to. It is the only time he remembers crying in his entire life. He hurt, of course, but mostly he was scared of what he’d done, and what he’d almost done. Aurthour wiped his own eyes with his bruised wrist and dabbed the blood from Equius’s face with a fresh towel. His hands moved, slow and gentle, as though he were the one whose featherlight touch might bruise. Aurthour stood there, humming in deep blue bass, combing his fingers through Equius’s tangles long after he finally fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Equius heals.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AUGH okay so I posted the first chapter of this over a year ago, and then I wrote most of the rest of it, but just got stuck on this dialogue part. I am basically throwing this chapter up here so that I can actually post the rest of this thing. Sorry that this chapter is so short and rough, but I figured I might as well finally finish this! The next two chapters just need to be proofread, so they'll be up soon.

Equius recovered, but slowly. After a little while, he couldn’t feel his ribs grinding against themselves when he breathed, and the bones in his hands started to knit themselves back together. He tried to build something, anything, to keep his mind busy after so long in his recuperacoon, but his clumsy hands, stiff from disuse, shook and dropped his tools each time he tried.

Metal that once was almost liquid in his deft hands now bunched when it should be smooth, and whole sheets of metal lay crumpled on the ground. Exercising was out of the question. He was not used to being unable to do things, to move his body in a useful way. Typing was almost impossible. Still, reading and sitting at his computer was just about all he could do.

His fingers, learning their movements all over again, fumbled over the tiny wires. Slowly his hands remembered their mechanical pathways. Screws started finding their way into their holes, and his fingers found their purpose again.

She chatted him on Trollian one night.

AC:  :33 < hellooooo? *waves shyly at stranger*

He didn’t know who she was, but he didn’t have anything else to do, so he answered, typing with as much painstaking gentleness as he could muster with his newly unbandaged index finger.

CT: D --> What. Who are you?

AC: :33 < a new furriend to rp with!

CT: D - -> It would behoof you to identify yourself before I block you.

AC: 33 < aww fine, but only if you play with me after!

He thought about it. He typed out a few dismissive responses, but then he thought about his evening, full of frustrating attempts to build things, trying to eat whatever Aurthour made for him, and eventually going to sleep. There wasn’t anything better he could be doing. He tried to push down the small flutter in his stomach at the idea of having a friend, but then she messaged him again.

AC: 33 < *blinks cutely at CT and rubs her head on his cheek* purrlease??

The corner of his mouth twitched up, and it didn’t hurt as much as he’d expected. He let himself smile all the way, and reached his hand back up to the keyboard.

CD: D - -> That is an a%eptable exchange.

AC: 33 < :DD im nepeta!

It didn’t take him long to feel like they’d always known each other after that. He spent that season talking to her, and healing, but mostly talking to her. His body became his again, a strong, precise machine. It felt good.

As for the robots, he kept fighting them. Addiction is a powerful thing. And more than that, he needed to prove to himself that he could do it. Every pile of ruined machinery he left behind was more than a physical victory, now. Each one was to prove to himself, without letting himself think too hard about why, that he was in control of himself. If he didn’t have that, he had nothing.

Well. Not nothing. There was the new thing that was her. She lived far from him, and it hurt to not be able to touch her. When he looked around his hive at all the things he’d broken, though, he decided it was for the best.. He was broken when he met her, and he thought she might spend the rest of her life trying to put him back together. She never saw it that way, though, and she told him. They were a thing that simply was. Their chalk-rendered selves on the the wall of her cave a stalwartly circled piece of art surrounded by constantly changing parade of matches, all vacillating between quadrants like silly wrigglers. They were purrfect, and pale, and all their own, she said.

Little by little, he learned to believe her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Realizing that, in canon, they never actually met each other in real life until LOLCAT gave me so many feelings. Here they are.

He had strongjumped his way from land to land, doing what he had to in each. He took the game seriously, of course. It usually took him a minute to figure out whose land he was in, but when he reached the Land of Little Cubes and Tea, he knew right away. It looked like her and it felt like her. It even _smelled_ like her, and he had never actually smelled her before. Looking out over the white hills, though, he just knew.

And all of a sudden, there she was. All just barely 5 feet of her, scabbed knees and tangled hair and faux-innocent feline smile with that feisty rebelliousness hidden behind one dimple tugged cheek. The moment before she turned around and saw him felt like it would last a sweep. He stood there, grinding tiny cubes of sugar into powder with his too-big too-strong feet, not knowing what to say or what to do. What was the protocol for this? There were codes of conduct regarding moirallegiance. He’d read them (of course). They seemed too narrow to fit the easy grace of the two of them, though, and right then he didn’t think they applied at all, which was a distressing thought in and of itself.

His right hand flexed nervously at his side as he watched her slay an ogre. She took it down easily, leaping and slashing with her claws, her eyes flashing with the joy of it. She jumped, clapping her hands as the grist rained down around her. She turned, finally, at his low rumble of disdain and amusement at the sight of her.

Her eyes went wide when she saw him, and her body seemed to vibrate for a moment. And then she was running. Running at him at full speed and pouncing.

He fell backward, instinctively, as Nepeta leapt onto him. Willing his body to go limp, he lay there, terrified of himself, her on top of him. His lungs strained to hold the breath he was too afraid to let out, lest some tiny movement hurt her and ruin everything. But then she dug her claws in his side and he laughed. He laughed? He was ticklish, apparently. He hadn’t known that before.

They stared at each other, her perched on top of him, lying in the shade of a hill of sugar, and they laughed, looking at the reality of one another. She touched his face, his chest, his horns, and squeezed his hands with what felt like strength to rival his own. Her hands explored his body, confirming his existence, as his own hands hovered, awkward and shaky, above her. She was nuzzling under his chin when he finally settled them, gently, on the nape of her neck. This is what it was like, he thought, to touch someone the way they were meant to be touched. He ran his trembling fingers through her wild hair, marveling at every strand of it. She was here, and she was touching him like he was someone who deserved it.

Skin on skin, they breathed each other in. She didn’t seem to mind his sweat, and he ignored the dirt and dried blood under her claws. Her hand crept up toward his glasses and paused, fingers curling back into themselves, unsure. She cocked an eyebrow, and he nodded. Slowly she took his glasses off, looking for the first time at his eyes.

“It’s you,” she whispered, “It’s you.”

She smiled at him (at him!) and kissed the tired blue swells under his eyes. Softly at first, and then again and again, laughing.

“I’m stronger than you thought,” she smirked, “Look at you, all pinned under my purrrfect pounce!”

His hands had were responsible for much that he was proud of, he thought- he could grind stone to dust with a punch and he could create and connect the tiny gears and wires he needed to build a working machine with ease, but just then he realized that this-touching her hair-was the best thing his hands had ever done **.**

“It’s true,” he said, lifting his nose up to touch hers, “You are the strongest.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now I'll be bold  
> As well as strong  
> And use my head alongside my heart  
> So tame my flesh  
> And fix my eyes  
> A tethered mind freed from the lies
> 
> And I'll kneel down,  
> Wait for now  
> I'll kneel down,  
> Know my ground
> 
> Raise my hands  
> Paint my spirit gold  
> And bow my head  
> Keep my heart slow
> 
> 'Cause I will wait, I will wait for you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final moment.

The fate of the meteor, and therefore the universe, rested on Equius- a responsibility he didn’t particularly want, but would shoulder, since  he gave it, the mutantblood with the mouth full of rage and the brain full of worth it. Equius was supposed to defend them all against Gamzee, and the idea made him tired. Each foe frustrated him more than the last. He wanted to be strong, but his priorities lay, curled up and purring, with her. If she could not sleep safely, cheek nestled comfortably against her bloody, impudent hand, it wasn’t worth it. None of it was. The hemospectrum became a blur, a whirl of necessity revolving around one swath of color. His feet were rooted against the in the solidity of olive green. He tried to convince himself that that was okay.

He had told her to hide, and he thought she would listen. He was the protector, after all. He knew which commands she would obey and which she wouldn’t. This, he thought, she would. Her life and his honor were at stake.

When it came time for it, for the end, he didn’t know. He wasn’t prepared for the arrow in his leg, for the bow around his neck. As much as he readied himself for an eventual submission to the highblood-as much as his pulse raced in a way he tried not to think too hard about when he thought about giving in to those final throat-tightening conditions, he hadn’t planned this. He had thought it would have happened differently. 

And so, when he knelt at Gamzee’s feet, and it was scary instead of exciting, he didn’t think of himself. Of course he didn’t. He thought of her and only her. She, he knew, could take care of herself. Nepeta, with her claws and smirking fearsomeness powered by the beat of a steady heart. But still, in that moment, he feared for her. It was his job to. More than he ever felt a duty to his blood or his caste, he felt a duty to her. He breathed while she breathed; he fought alongside her. 

So when it happened, when he looked into the highblood’s eyes and saw nothing but the void he knew every twist of, he cowed. It was reflexive, and he had thought, in that moment, that it was the right thing to do.

He remembered then how it had been before, the last time he felt a hand at his throat. The metal grip of the robot had been cooler than the heat of Gamzee’s hands. He remembered how, last time, he had stood up and fought back. It was strange, this feeling he had now, that he shouldn’t do that again. It was different this time. He was not standing, but he was not giving up. He was realizing something. He didn’t need to fight it out because the anger that had had consumed him for so long was no longer there. There was a peace in submission, and he did it willingly, because it wasn’t submission to Gamzee himself, but to the timeline that demanded it. He was done fighting, and, he thought, there was strength in that.

A hidden pocket of his mind whispered that this would not be all that was left for him. He had kneeled, but he was not done **.** Wherever he would go, whatever dream bubble bobbed just beyond his reach, he knew he'd wait for her in it. At the end, as the light faded to blue and then to black, it wasn’t the pain he thought about, or the fact that he was breaking, again. The idea finally pounced past the mind barriers it was hidden behind, flashing a green smile that mirrored itself on his own face, broken teeth and all-that he had been whole all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, sorry this is so short and sad! This ending is basically what I wanted to write when I started out with this- I wanted to figure out why Equius's death happened the way it did, and then worked backward from there. And then many months happened and I maybe didn't give this as much effort as I originally intended, back when I was in the height of my homestuck phase. I wanted to finish it, though! I hope you enjoy  
> ;_;


End file.
